Out of my Mind
by JWAB
Summary: In 3x18, Rebekah toyed with the notion of compelling Damon to hurt Elena... "You're a smart boy: be creative," Rebekah said. "Impress me. Take your time, but break her."
1. Chapter 1

**Out of My Mind**

_For CreepingMuse, whose ideas make my brain explode with joy: a fic for a prompt._

_(Special thanks to afanoftvd, WildYennifer, and Elvishgrrl for beta-ing and talking this through with me!)_

The pain rises and rises in waves, long slow ripples deep as the ocean, and in shards, shuddering and shocking. I stand perfectly still and the ragged slip of unmending slices finally calms. Then the inevitable weakness overtakes me. I slump, I hang, and the teeth of the bear traps shred my skin, digging further, scraping along tendon and bone.

The pain never stops. It. Never. Stops.

Sometimes Rebekah is a goddess and sometimes a monster. Always that same petulant pout, that baby face like an overgrown pre-teen, those audacious freckles, and inside an abyss of need and rage and hell. She is Circe, Medea, Gaia. She is Death.

I anticipate her visits. They are something at least and if I'm lucky, the end. She talks, mostly to herself. I respond: I bob, I weave. I make grandiose promises we both know I can't keep. I scream, moan, wail. I taunt her so she'll stake me and the pain will stop.

She is impenetrable. I am mesh.

* * *

She saunters in. "Kiss me," she says. I spit in her face. She cuts a long, slow slice in my thigh, along a vein. It's sickeningly wet and then there's a new pulse of pain. She watches but doesn't stay long.

I have been here forever.

The tarp is covered with stains and splotches of my blood. I gaze at them like the clouds on an autumn afternoon. A duck, the letter Q, a hammer, the silhouette of a woman's body. Torture Rorschach tests. Ha. Then Dr. Rebekah visits and all the shapes are new. The hammer is a tree.

Rorschach… therapy… delusions… day dreams. That's where I get the idea.

I have nothing but time and pain. First, just Elena's face. I conjure her deep brown eyes, sparkling with life and spunk and joy, skin the color of café au lait, lips soft like a ripe raspberry. Her mahogany hair, blown back from her face, little wisps against her forehead. My Elena – his Elena. Fuck it; here, my Elena. Ten seconds of less pain. It comes back worse, but it is worth it. Her face. Again.

I push further. Elena is cooking, we are laughing. I hand her a pepper. I get the oil out of the cupboard, grab the garlic too. She asks for a knife. I pull one from the block and it's covered with blood, it's Rebekah's knife, it's my blood. I scream, howl, and she dissolves along with the smell of dinner.

Dreams are perilous. They show you what you fear, what you want, who you are.

* * *

The pain surrounds me, squeezes me in a terrible embrace. I have to stay awake. I mumble old poems no one remembers anymore, one after the other from my lessons so long ago. Keats and Wordsworth are not helping, not horrible enough, so Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, someone I recognize. Now passages from new books, movies, songs, I don't care. I need words that are real. I dig them all up; soon the recalled words float and swirl, waltz with stabbing shards of pain. I seize on Emily Dickinson because she was tortured too, I know it, she understood pain: "It cannot recollect when it began/or if there was a time when it was not/it has no future but itself." I have no walls. I want to weep for Emily but I can't, I have never been as dry as this.

I cannot trust my dreams but they come and I don't know whose they are. I remember Stefan as a child, following me down to the quarry because I don't bother to stop him. Father insists he is my responsibility but I just want to swim. I never swam in the quarry. I don't remember this. I just want to swim but Stefan can't swim. I call for someone to watch him, I know they are inside, I know they will come but this time no one comes and I am alone with Stefan. Where is he? I spin, scanning the bushes, the trees. I begin to run but I know, I have no way of knowing but I know he is under the water. I call for him, scream, but I know he is sinking. The water is dark, it's impossible to see deeper than a few inches and he is just gone. I dive in, thrash around, I am so young but he is younger, too little, I reach senselessly in every direction, scream Stefan's name under the water. He is gone, he is gone, he is gone.

Rebekah stands at the shore. I am nine and weeping.

"Kiss me," Rebekah says. I close my eyes. This is not happening. Please let this not be happening. "No? Fine." She slices through my carotid artery and licks the knife clean. I tell her I shouldn't have taken advantage of her with Sage. She throws the knife at my chest and it nicks a little triangle; the blood rises and overflows. Then she goes upstairs and sings in the shower.

* * *

The fire crackles. Elena's face again, her breath, closer and closer. She is here, she is actually here, she wants to rescue me. She cannot fathom the pain and I won't tell her. Rebekah will kill her, I am certain of it, but I am too weak to resist so I tell her how to undo the traps. Do I know how? When she opens the left one I dangle from the right. She tries to catch me but she's not prepared for it so my hand almost rips off. I've never seen a one-handed vampire but it must be possible; mending and regenerating are not the same. She's supporting my weight while I hobble down the hall. I have never been big but still she carries my weight too easily.

I am exhausted. She can't carry me all the way to the car. I collapse in the middle of the room; I just need a minute. Isn't this the same room? Where is the tarp? Elena insists I go on but I have nothing left. She has to leave, she's being an idiot. Rebekah is near, I can feel it, she will stick her like a pig and I will be powerless to stop it. I won't be able to save her and I can't take it, Elena, get out of here. She is coming.

I search my hollow mind for some way to make Elena leave, but she holds her wrist at my lips. I need it so badly I can't find the strength to refuse. She doesn't flinch when my fangs puncture her skin and she tastes like the sun, she tastes like salt and meat and love. I suck and suck, my eyes locked with hers. They tell me she loves me, clear as words. Now she can't spare much more blood and I can make do with this, but my lips ache for more of her and she wants it too, she's leaning in to kiss me. I can't kiss her with her blood on my lips but where is the blood?

The pain roars. Elena is gone. Rebekah is here. "You bitch."

Dreams are perilous. They show anyone with the power and will to eavesdrop exactly what you fear, what you want, who you are.

* * *

I want that dream again.

Elena's face, her breath, she is here to rescue me. She has no idea what this kind of pain is but she would take it on herself, for me, I see it. Rebekah is coming but I am too weak so I tell her how to undo the traps. I forget, remember next time to prepare her for the weight, but I forget so my arm almost rips clean off. She nearly carries me down the hall. I collapse in the middle of the room; give me a minute, the pain, I can't think. Isn't this the same room? Elena insists I go on but there is nothing to compare to this pain and Rebekah is coming. Elena has to leave, she's being an idiot.

She refuses to leave, to leave me, and now she feeds me, fills me with light and lust and love. I have to be careful, I have to be careful, I have to be careful. Not too much, if I kill her I can't kiss her, but the blood comes rushing into me and she is wilting in front of me. I am killing her, stop, stop, STOP. She is gray, she topples like an old building.

Rebekah grins at me, traces an old wound with her knife. She is a snake.

* * *

It is too much but I want it. The dream comes back to me and I am powerless to stop it. I want it, I think I can change it, but it gets worse every time. Elena is stabbed, staked. Tortured in my place, beheaded. Beheaded while kissing me.

Rebekah grabs my hair and I'm back on the tarp. The pain is intolerable. How is it possible that I am still alive? She tugs my head to the side and blood spurts from the wound in my neck and I wonder when there will simply not be enough blood to bleed. It has to be soon. She points my face at hers.

"Kiss me," she says, squinting, stepping back.

I don't want to but then I do. I feel the tug of her fingers in my hair but it's nothing like the pull of her mind on mine, like a hook spearing through my will. She is too far away but I reach, God help me, I will rip my arms from my hands but I have to kiss her. I feel my left wrist tearing.

"Come closer," I beg.

"No." She flashes a sickening smile.

The tendon tears and I am sobbing from the pain but I am closer to her lips, one more fraction of an inch and now I'm close enough to feel them. Relief. Horrifying, ugly pain but the hook in my brain is out.

"Finally," she says. "Now we can get started."

I moan. I want to be done forever. "Why don't you just kill me already?"

"Because then I can't play with you. And what good is revenge if it's not fun? I've even prepared. I've done research."

I tremble in fear. I actually tremble. She is everything and I am an aching, terrified nothing. This is what it is like to be entirely at someone's mercy.

She runs her fingers through my hair and it's tender in a way I pretended to be tender with her. It reeks of mockery. Then her hand is a fist in my hair and my neck is craning too far again and her eyes hold mine like they have hands of their own.

I can feel the hook poised there, ready to stab through my mind.

"I want you to hurt Elena. I don't care how. You're a smart boy: be creative. Impress me. Take your time, but break her. Oh, and no more vervain for you."

She looks away but the hook is in and it hurts more than all of the cuts combined.


	2. Chapter 2

_(A/N: Many thanks for following, for favoriting, and for your enthusiastic comments! I am over the moon about this fic, and about your response to it.)_

A new dream, the same game. Soft footsteps from the hall, closer, Stefan's silhouette. My mind crouches to spar with Rebekah. "This was much different in my head," I say, as if this isn't in my head. As if she isn't.

I can tell it's not real because Stefan doesn't care. I am howling from every pore and he looks disappointed.

"Klaus, I'm here," he calls into the enormous, echoing room. "Let's do this." He's carrying a giant duffel bag full of firewood. Firewood? No, stakes. Our stakes. Good lord, she knows. How does Rebekah know about the stakes?

Rebekah is here and so is Klaus. The stakes are news to her which is worse, so much worse: this is real. Stefan is spilling it, all of it, every bit of what we had over them, pouring it out like sour milk. This has to be real and if I get out of this alive he will never get to be in charge of plans again. He wants to trade our only chance against them for my life and I am the most dangerous weapon of all.

A wave of old pain rises, crests, breaks. It feels stale, brittle. My eyes roll back.

Stefan says there are eight stakes but there are eleven stakes, eleven, I whittled them my damn self and I am going to sing like a twelve year old mafia canary when they inevitably ask me.

Klaus wants to know, Rebekah hasn't told him about our game, he wants to know if the vervain is out. He whispers in my ear to go home. I refuse to admit in front of Stefan that I can't deny him. Even without his eyes in mine I fight not to obey. "No," I growl. Stefan can't know and maybe that is pride but maybe I want to keep it a secret so I can hurt Elena like Rebekah told me to. No, I will not hurt Elena.

Rebekah's hook tugs against my impertinence and I swear I feel my head yanked to the side.

Maybe I will, a little.

Another tug, harder.

Maybe a lot.

Klaus grabs my face and tears the slit in my neck again and he insists. Two hooks now but this one is barbed and requires my immediate attention. I say goodbye to my hands and pull, I pull. The wounds grow wider, tendons stretch too far, they are not elastic. I grunt. I bear down against the searing, impossible sensation of flesh being torn from muscle.

He is laughing. "Stop, stop, before you hurt yourself." I stop. Fucking hilarious, you sick fuck.

Now he asks and I can finally tell him there are eleven, I can tell him every detail, how you can still just barely make out the W on one of them. There is markedly less pain for a split second. Ask me something else. I am full of answers.

Klaus wants to punish Stefan for lying by compelling me again, something horrible but he has nothing on Rebekah. His suggestion pokes at my brain like a fork testing if I'm cooked yet. Chew my tongue out? Yes, please – can I trade that one for the one I've already got? Torture Monopoly, never ever pass go. Ha.

Now Klaus is railing at Stefan, I'm not following but I don't have to because I know what he is going through. Stefan's love is complicated. Klaus plainly craves it in a way I once did although I hid it better. Klaus riles him and I remember that too and then Klaus lets him pin him against the wall, one stashed stake poised above his heart. Stefan is fooling no one, Klaus and I both know he won't kill him, he couldn't kill me. He hates that he needs a brother, can't love him, can't kill him, even when the him is only a substitute.

"This is ridiculous," Rebekah whines. She is prowling toward me too quickly, I can't prepare, all I have time to do is scan her hands for the knife. She releases my left hand and I swing from the right trap like a monkey. Now it's open and I crumple on the tarp, my knees bend, crash against the hard floor. "Take your brother as a sign of good faith," she says but only she and I are in on the secret, it is an act of destruction. She winks at me before she leaves and I want to hurl but I have bled everything, it is all gone. I am all gone. Nothing is left in me but her hook.

* * *

In the car, Stefan doesn't speak. I don't speak. I groan. He grits his teeth. He is silently berating himself but he should save it for me, for when I flay the skin from his girlfriend's bones and lick them dry while she watches.

We're home. Basement cell, Stefan. Think. Be smart and figure this out because if I tell you then I can't do it and I have to do it.

Is Elena here? Where is Elena?

I am a bomb.

He supports my weight, not gently enough, in the wrong direction, to my bathroom. Turns on the water, tries to help me with my shirt. I scowl, he leaves. Steam clouds the mirror but I can still see myself behind it. I am a bloody smear.

My shoulders ache in every position. I feel heavy. I am not used to being responsible for my weight. The water pounds against my skin. I sit in my shower, on that ledge where Andie's perfect toes perched while she shaved her impossibly long legs. I miss her, I miss them, I miss _then_. The water pries the slits apart. Weak, pale blood runs and I cannot come clean. I will never come clean.

I long for Elena and I don't trust the reason.

* * *

Safety is unfamiliar. Rebekah will appear, Stefan's dismembered head will wobble on my bed, the ragged, gruesome wound exposing meat. I can feel the tarp slip against the hard wood when I take a step. I cower when my hip grazes the corner of the vanity, I am certain it's her knife.

The hook aches, demands my attention.

I wrap a towel around my waist and register the fleeting gratitude that Rebekah didn't slice my dick off. It must have crossed her mind, but then, she would have to know what damage I could wreak with it intact. And now I can think of nothing else because the hook has skewered that thought and I am watching myself violently drill a screaming Elena into her bed. I dry heave; I pinch my thigh to bring me back. I will not. I will not. The hook pierces, tugs. It is not happy.

"Are you okay?" Stefan is brooding on the edge of my bed. He steals a glance at me; my chest is raw with new red scars. I could teach anatomy class with my wrists, still. He winces, tries to chuckle. "Of course not."

"Right," I say.

He's all business because he has no real idea how to help me. "Look, I have to go over to Alaric's to get that stake back. Will you be all right here? I brought you some bags -"

We both hear Elena's car in the driveway and I am pulling pants on before he can form the next word. "No, I'll go."

"What? Damon, you should rest. You look terrible -"

I'm dressed. I'm clean. I'm Damon on the outside. I'm going to get the fuck out of here before I kill the girl I love. "Got to go – hot date with Dr. Jekyll."

I am downstairs before she is on the porch but I can't find my motherfucking keys. I haven't touched them since before. They are antediluvian like everything else in this place, nothing here knows what happened. I blur around the room looking for them but it costs me – I should have grabbed a blood bag upstairs. I am near panic. Here she comes and _where the fuck are they_? Something shimmers beside the staircase. I snatch them up, they feel like knives. She's already opening the door. _Get out now._ I am caught.

Elena pauses in the doorway, worried. She can see almost none of what is wrong with me. "Oh my God, Damon, how are you?"

"Fine." I grit my teeth against the hook. I squint, I'm thinking. Absolutely not, leave. Do not hurt her, do not speak, do not touch. Leave. Yank. "No thanks to you."

Her mouth opens and closes. She is hurt. _Now_ I can leave.


	3. Chapter 3

_(A/N: All kinds of sloppy, grateful love to my readers, to everyone who is willing to follow me on this. Guest reviewers who I can't thank directly: thank you! As MrsSeminara said, this is only the beginning….)_

I was hoping for a little help but Alaric has his own crazy to worry about, having managed to steal his own stake from himself. We are neck and neck for craziest motherfucker in Mystic Falls, and that is saying something. Stefan is useless for figuring this shit out and I need someone to figure this out. I need someone to stop me.

I'm home again, home is empty, and I come home empty-handed. I am the Gertrude Stein of home and emptiness. I tramp down to the basement but the fuck of it is that you cannot lock yourself in a dungeon. I stand in the dank, floorless room, nothing here but dirt and history and brick. Could I rig the door to lock when I pull it from the inside?

The hook does not like where this is going. It prefers the plan it hatched, with only the tiniest suggestion from me, which involved throwing Elena from the top of the Lockwood mansion. It even drove me over to her house to pick her up so I could play Elena Shotput and it wasn't until I saw her peering out at me from her front window that I realized where I was and sped away like a criminal.

I wish the hook could be satisfied with passive-aggressive comments but it says no, it says be creative and we both know that doing anything two times in a row doesn't qualify. It wants me to be an artist. It hurts to refuse, hurts like nothing I have ever felt before, not like knives or the teeth of bear traps, not like burning alive, nothing hurts like the hook.

The front door squeaks open upstairs. "Damon?" Her voice tip-toes down to me.

Before I can stop myself I am dutifully, diabolically shouting, "down here!" I clamp my hand over my mouth too late. I am a cartoon character, holding words in with my fucking _hand_.

She is at the top of the basement stairs. I peek my head out the door of the cell and she smiles an apologetic request. She has everything backwards. I am desperate to warn her but if I do _that_ then I can't do_ it_ and I have to do it so I blur up the stairs and am standing right next to her. I give her no breathing room and she smells better than anything I have smelled in a very long time, she smells like lilacs. She smells like sugar and skin. "Elena," I murmur and the rest of that sentence is _get the fuck out of here_, only she can't hear it.

I gesture an invitation downstairs. She takes a step but my foot is just a little in the way so she trips, falls, face-plants in the dirt at the bottom of the stairs with a resounding thud.

"Ow," she mutters to herself.

I am a freak show. I can't control my own fucking feet.

"Clumsy of me," I say because it was, how did that move get past me? I take the stairs slowly and watch her brush the dust from her jeans, maybe more careful over her knees. Did she break something? Just a tiny fracture perhaps?

"Are you okay?" Say no.

"Yeah," she says. Fuck. "What are you doing down here?"

I pause, I stall. Talking is very complicated. The hook has its own agenda, it rips through my brain to get access to my mouth so the cowering part of me can tell her every horrible thing I have ever half-thought about her. _You dick-teasing, hopeless martyr of a cunt, at least Katherine would suck me off before she ran off to Stefan's bedroom, and she moaned like a very bad kitty with him, not like your cheap little grunts_. I bite my lip to keep it in and consider volunteering again to chew out my tongue, thanks Klaus, great idea. Another part of me, I am seriously in danger of a psychotic break, the part of me that is clinging white-knuckled to some old image of myself is also screaming, maybe slightly louder than the _cunt, cunt, cunt _part,it is screaming _get the fuck out of here, get out, save yourself for once in your life you stupid danger-sucking whore _and see? The hook is winning again.

I clear my throat and wonder what is about to come out of this treacherous hole in my face. "Looking for something." Like my sanity. Peace. A bat to smash your head with. My head with.

"Can I help?"

Under no circumstances. Yank. "Sure. Come on in." More fuck.

She steps across the threshold and I slam her into the doorjamb by accident on purpose. "Oops," I say. She looks at me like _what is your problem?_ and I want to Pavarotti the whole blessed story to her, every stab and twist, ending with _now will you get the fuck out of here before I eat you?_ Instead I attempt a gracious smile. "You first," I offer lamely.

I follow her into the cell and now the hook is much happier about this whole cell situation, it is squealing with delight because if I could figure out how to lock us both in imagine the torture I could unleash on this girl. And then I do, I can't not. There is wall-slamming and gut-punching and hair-pulling and some quaint and hilarious hair-cutting, maybe a mullet; there is nothing to slice her with except my fangs but that's all right because now there is chomping and ripping and blood-draining and of course there is always verbal cruelty, I have a black belt in that.

The hook reminds me that I don't need a lock. I could accomplish any and all of those things right fucking now because I am a monster and was even before. I could crush her in a heartbeat, no warning, just do it. Me and Nike. Run a marathon, kill the girl you love, slam a fucking dunk.

I bear down against the yank I know is coming. Suck it, Rebekah. "Actually Elena, you should go." I am yowling with pain on the inside, skewered, a vampire-kabob.

She is resolute and I know those eyes, those are eyes that need to confess. Father Damon, that's me, say three Hail Marys and lean your head back for just a second. She breathes, she won't relent. "I wanted to rescue you but Stefan thought you would want us to go through with the plan. I shouldn't have listened to him. I am so, so sorry."

I close my eyes but all I can see is bloody, decapitated Elena so they fly open again. "Fine. Now go."

"But I want to help you." She cannot take a hint. She can't even take direct motherfucking instructions. "You're still feeling vulnerable, Damon, maybe still scared. I know you don't want to admit it. But listen to me: everything you're feeling, it's normal. And it will get better. I can help." She waits but she will get nothing from me and that's better than the indeterminate violent something I am ready to give her. "It's good that you're still feeling. That you didn't flip the switch."

I wouldn't be able to tolerate this patronizing bullshit even if I was the King of Perfectland with an assfull of sunshine. "Leave."

"Damon, you have to let someone in. I want to help you."

"Get the fuck out of my house." I slam my right fist against my thigh because damn if it wasn't getting ready for an upper cut without telling me.

"Don't shut yourself away like this. Don't shut me out. I know, I should have found you sooner and saved you. You would have saved me and I should have saved you."

Yes and this is me saving you because if you don't leave this instant I am going to bash your head against these bricks and watch your cute little doppelganger brains slide down the wall, after which I will bash my own head into that same spot until it is no longer attached. So if you want to save me, now is your fucking chance. Leave now leave motherfucking leave _you have to leave_.

The very best I can do, and I give it a solid 10 for technique, is keep my trap shut. Trap. Ha. I will never not be thinking about that room.

Her expression starts out hopeful but I am still not saying anything and my hands are fists at my sides, so tense I am getting actual finger cramps, what's one more kind of pain really. And now those beautiful eyes that did save me, Elena, they did, those eyes are losing their luster and sliding into something too mournful and sad because maybe, just maybe she is more than a dick-tease, of course she is, she is just a confused teenager who loves two boys and one just a little more than the other. Sucker, that's not even a little bit true.

"Fine." She waits a second more for me to stop her but I am too busy stopping myself. She leaves, finally, I hear her footsteps on the stairs and I take a breath, I relax for half a second, less, and that's it, I lose.

She is by the door but I am not done with her. I jam her fragile, pulsing body against the wall. I pin her there, hold her there with my hips and God help me but I am hard as a rock and that is the hook too because this is the opposite of sexy, it's just another way to scare the shit out of her and I can see it in her eyes, she is scared as shit but she's hiding it, we are both so damn good at hiding from each other. My elbows crash against the wall, I frame her face, I surround her. Her indignation feels familiar, like old jeans, old jeans that kind of hate you and kind of want to fuck your brains out.

"Damon, you win. I'm going. Okay?"

"Don't come back," I snarl and the snarling is the hook but the words are me, just listen to the words Elena. And then the tiny portion of me that can still think its own thoughts does. Be sneaky, plant a seed that she might be able to figure out or hey, she might not and I could just torture her until she doesn't resemble a person anymore. The seed is barely an idea but it's all I've got so I muster all of my strength, it takes everything in me but I beg her, I whisper against her neck, "please."

It is a message in a bottle. It is code. Help me, Elena. I never say please.


	4. Chapter 4

_(I'm a little bit possessed by this fic, guys. Thankfully some of you are too, as your comments and favorites and follows suggest, and for that I just don't have big enough words of gratitude. Something really long, in German maybe, with parts that mean love and incredibly honored and full of delight. And to the guests who have commented with such gusto, I love you too and would tell you individually if I could._

_Every chapter I post for this fic feels like I've gone overboard. So the butterflies are familiar, but still. I hope you don't all jump ship on this one._

_Thanks to Elvishgrrl and CreepingMuse for wisdom and feedback. There will be a shitton of wine when this is over.)_

I am thirsty. I'm pretty sure the hook is an alcoholic.

Elena hasn't been back. She didn't get it. I knew it was a long shot. I am on my own. Always have been.

The night was long and today feels like forever. It doesn't matter if I sleep, the dreams transform, they are just below the surface. Stefan, a child, I know what's coming so I won't let go of his hand, my fingers are a vice around his, and he doesn't drown but suddenly I am now, I am me, I don't know my own strength and I rip his tiny arm out of its socket. Then another, Elena's face and I refuse, categorically refuse all dreams of Elena, I tear open a wound on my wrist and pour bourbon over it to keep the dream away.

Rebekah is in my head. She has seeped in and I have to find a way to scrub her out.

I miss Elena and the hook misses her, too. Every minute I spend away from her hurts double. But double pain is great, it's peaches, because it's triple pain or a gajillion pain if I kill her and that's all me, no hook. Just crippling, immortal regret.

Twice today I was sitting in my Camaro without warning, keys in hand, ready to drive to her house. Twice I slammed my fist into my thigh, only healed on the outside (me and you both, buddy). Twice I trudged up the porch steps and into the house I didn't remember leaving. I may staple myself to the couch because there is no way out of this except staying the fuck put. I grit my teeth. I will beat this. I haven't left, I am _still here_, I am nowhere near Elena. One more drink to celebrate small victories.

Eventually the screaming pain will quiet or dull or I'll get used to it. It is impossible to feel this degree of pain forever and not lose my fucking mind. When it starts to ebb, when it peaks at least, which holy fuck let it be soon, then I will determine how to take Rebekah down. I can do it. I am smarter than this. I am the smartest goddamn person I know.

One more glass.

* * *

I am lying on Elena's bed. Fog fills her room from the top down. It spills onto the ceiling of her confined, too-cozy space like an upside-down haunted house.

A new dream. No, I refuse. I grab at my arm but I am still here, still in her room, no glass. I can't wake up. I slap my face, I pinch. Nothing. Rebekah is getting better at this, I am trapped in this dream, but I am getting better at this too, I am a seasoned fucking professional. Hit me with your best shot. I am Captain Willpower.

Elena comes out of the bathroom and now the fog is steam from her shower. She smells like honeysuckle and lilacs, like Virginia Spring, like tramping through the grapes of Southern goddamn wrath before I left the war. She is wrapped in a faded purple towel. See, clearly a dream, Elena never comes out of the bathroom in anything but her tight little PJs. They are too short but I will never tell her because her ass peeks out of the bottom of them, just a little, just enough to be the sexiest thing she ever wears. But Rebekah doesn't know that so Elena's wearing a towel. Her hair hangs in long, wet ropes, not yet combed, but Elena would have combed it in the bathroom already. Rebekah, you are a Neanderthal, my Elena is so much classier than this.

"Damon, what are you doing?" She clamps her arms over her already covered breasts and I test my dream powers by imagining the towel dropping at her feet. No dice.

This one, this particular mindfuck will be about stealing and wielding the upper hand. I come out swinging. "Don't act surprised. Don't pretend you don't want me here."

"Of course I do, but -"

"I'm not going to be your pin cushion anymore."

She turns her head, keeps her eyes on me. Rebekah is getting Elena's special cocktail of hurt and indignation and intrigued, hormonal want just right. Bravo. "I know, Damon."

"That's it? That's all you've got?" I have learned how this works. We are writing this dream together, Barbie Klaus and I, and I want to drive.

"I wasn't trying to lead you on."

"Lead me on? You must be joking. You couldn't lead a _parade_. You're cute, sure, but you're a child. You haven't got the slightest clue how to do this right."

"Are you serious?"

What an opening, I think, and now I need a pipe, I get all misty-eyed and I settle in to tell a story. This is going to be masterpiece fucking theater. "Now Andie, she knew how to lead a man on, how to get a man. She roped me good. You remember Andie, don't you? Legs that went _all_ the way up, and she was brilliant, she could actually keep up with me. More than I could ever say for you." She's startled. Surprise, I am taking over. "Her tits were… well, you two could duke it out for tits I guess, but her pussy was just amazing. Hands down the best pussy I ever encountered. She tasted like sweet and sour sauce. No joke. I could have eaten her for fucking ever."

"Get out," she seethes. Any minute there will be a knife in my gut or I will be drinking her dry. The horrible slurp of the last drops through a straw. Ha. The horrible rattle of Elena's last breath. I wait, brace myself. Nothing. I keep pushing.

"But your precious Stefan killed her."

"I know."

"Thoughtless and inconsiderate don't begin to cover it. And sure, you weren't there when he did it but you helped to make him the kind of douchebag that would kill my favorite pussy. Come on sweetheart, take some credit." I am winning the shit out of this. "Couldn't you win him back when you had the chance? Why'd you give up so easily?"

"I never gave up on him. I still haven't."

I erupt. "_Then what the fuck are you doing with me_?"

She wilts onto the bed, wraps the towel around her tighter. She can't look at me, I am really getting to her, I am penetrating, and now I'm sure that if I break the source then the compulsion will break and I will be free of this and Elena will be safe. I am just getting started.

I pace. I am the inquisitor. I am CSI, NCIS, SVU, I am whatever the acronym is for badass motherfucker. "But it's really Katherine you should envy. Stefan and I, we pined for her for a century and a half. Sustained devotion. Both of us, him too, he'd argue with me but I know he missed her. Stefan was pining for her _while he was fucking you_, I guarantee it. And me? Yeah. She is a hall of fame heartbreaker. You may have a slight edge in violent torture, but she could fuck with a man's head and make him thank her for it. She is better than you could ever be in your wildest, dirtiest fantasies." She is still as a statue. Dead fucking giveaway, Rebekah. Elena would be panting and slapping me. I dig in deeper. "Because she makes you love her. And you wouldn't _begin_ to know how to do that."

Elena is wide-eyed and crying which means this is working so I turn it up.

"But what's really ironic is you choosing this place, bringing me here. Because Elena? Never in a million years, in your entire selfish existence will you ever come within a _continent_ of what she is. Her goodness. Her utter fucking perfection. No wonder Stefan didn't look back. No wonder you couldn't tempt him away from her and you sure as hell never tempted me. You pale beside her. There is no one, not even Katherine, as beautiful, as fucking luminous as that girl. She knows how to give and I have never seen you do a single thing but take." I am gaining on you, bitch.

Her eyes grow dark. "Damon, I'm Elena."

"Sure you are." I grab a shoulder with one hand and the towel with the other.

She clutches the towel around her. "What are you -?"

"Come on, Rebekah. All of this, this whole psychotic plot, is it just because you didn't get enough? That's why you're posing as the one person I would do anything, _anything_ to be with, you pathetic slit. So I'll fuck you like I mean it."

"What?" I've hit a nerve. She's shaken, I can see it. Sucks to lose the reins, doesn't it?

"You want more? I'm right here." I give her no room and I am fooling the hook, it is singing, clapping and dancing around in my head at this cringing Elena and there is markedly less pain. I am outsmarting Rebekah and her hook. Sure, that same small part of me that has no imagination is horrified to intimidate Elena like this and what I'm about to do I would slice my arm off before I did it to her but I remind that idiot that this is not Elena, Elena will never know about this, this is between me and Rebekah. This is only us and I am winning. I run my fingernails down her arm and take her hand tenderly and now who reeks of mockery? I kiss each fingertip, one at a time. Then I force her whole hand inside the front of my jeans.

"Damon!"

I cram it lower, I rub, I thrust, but there is no room because once again, thanks to this fucking hook, I am harder than stone.

"Don't act innocent. We both know where this hand has been." She yanks her hand out but it was there, skin against skin and part of me gnaws at the idea that it was Elena. No, idiot, it was imaginary Elena and that is nothing new. She cradles her hand, she is frozen. Something new lurks behind her eyes, maybe terror. Good. I am close.

She trembles. "Listen to me. _I'm Elena_. Rebekah let you go." She is reaching out, do it, just try to touch me the way she touches me. Show your fucking self. "Damon, she doesn't have you anymore. You're okay, you're here. With me." She is desperate, she is grasping at straws. Her fingers move an inch closer to my face.

My hand is up and I hear the slap before I feel the sting on my knuckles. The hook is exploding with glee and high-fiving my frontal lobe. "I would know you anywhere. You're hollow. You're a gaping hole. I _know_ you, Rebekah, and I fucking own you." Her cheek blooms pink. I throw her back against the bed hard and her head slams against the headboard. Crack. Two points for unnecessary roughness.

I hear the front door and that is an interesting twist. Baby Stefan again? My father? Rebekah? Who the fuck knows, but she's screaming for help and I need to get one last point in before the game changes so I climb on top, I grab her hair and slam her head on that board again, thrusting against her for good measure.

"Elena?" Alaric's voice. Huh, not bad, Rebekah. He's pounding up the stairs. He's here, the bedroom door bangs open behind me. "Jesus Christ," he groans, his voice is a heavy rasp and it is the sound of losing the last of everything you have ever loved. I whip around and there is something about this. The hook howls and the tiny me inside that knew it was really Elena is suddenly enormous. It is monstrous, I am monstrous, I am losing the thread. I am losing.

Alaric grabs my shoulders and I let him, holy hell, I won't stop him, this is real and everything that just happened _happened_. I am nothing but Rebekah, filled with her, I am the gaping hole. He's dragging me off the bed, off of Elena whose head I just smashed, no, _twice_. I can smell the blood. My jaw stings. Again. Again. My knees buckle.

"Ric, stop, STOP!" Again. He is holding me up and beating me down. "There's something wrong with him!"


	5. Chapter 5

_(A/N: I'm overwhelmed and giddy about the love you all are showing for this fic. Thank you! I love it too. Leave me a note and tell me what you're thinking, if you haven't already, or even if you have – your feedback helps keep me moving in the right direction._

_Special beta thanks to **CreepingMuse** for truth-telling and for her ego-boosting use of capital letters, and to **Elvishgrrl**, who is currently acting as my manager, agent, and sounding board.) _

Ric won't let go of my collar and that is fine with me because I have no intention of fighting back.

"He didn't know who I was. He's not okay," Elena says. The outside of her voice is steel but there's a squishy, terrified center and that's because of me so the hook is temporarily satisfied.

Alaric stares at Elena, at her blood on the headboard. "Are _you_ okay?"

"Tie me up," I murmur.

"I've got a vervain syringe in my car. Can you walk, Elena? Can you get it?"

Shit. I am screaming and it's inside my head and outside my head, it erupts from deep in my chest, "NO!" No more vervain for me. No more vervain for me. _Really_. Holy shit.

My cheekbone stings and I heave a low, relieved sigh because I know that Ric will stop me from hurting her even if I can't stop myself, but no more vervain for me. Jesus God, no vervain.

"Don't hurt him," Elena begs. She re-wraps the towel around herself and it is wildly unfair that she hasn't flashed me yet. "I'm fine. I'll get the vervain."

"_I can't! _ No! NO!" I push, I flail. He is digging me into this dingy carpet but no more vervain for me, seriously, no no no no.

"Go!" Alaric yells after her and she is running through the bathroom, grabbing her robe and finally I see a flash of hip, positively ludicrous what your mind seizes on in panic, her skin catches the harsh bathroom light as she drops the towel and flips the robe across her back and she's gone.

I have very little time left and I honestly do not know what will happen if they stick me. Will I die? Will I be forced to bleed myself dry, hey Rebekah, can I borrow your torture rig? No more fucking vervain for me.

I grab Ric's wrists. "Ric. Listen to me."

"Not a chance."

"Tie me up. Break my neck. But no vervain. I Can't. Have. Vervain." I try, I can't help but show him a glimpse of what it costs me to spit these words at him but he doesn't see it, he glares at me like I'm a D-minus essay. "Rebekah said I can't!" Maybe I could tell him more but I know, I haven't tested it but I am pretty damn certain that if I spell the whole compulsion out for him my brains will light themselves on fire and burn me from the inside out.

"Rebekah told you not to take vervain?"

I push him off. "Get me out of here before Elena comes back. I am fucking begging you." Yank. Apparently the hook would prefer I stay. Are my eyes bleeding?

"That's what the vervain is for!"

"You don't need it and I _can't have it_."

"Don't crack my spine on the way out."

I grit my teeth because the hook is grinding my brain into pesto. "Just take me far, far away from your complicated little parenting experiment." Yank. _GOD_.

Elena is back with the syringe. She's out of breath and slippery satin is a stupid way to keep a robe closed.

I take his arm and try not to squeeze it off. "Ric?"

There is a moment when he isn't sure, but then he is. "Okay," he says, and he's looking me in the eye in that way that he does, that way that feels like he is in it with me and thank fucking God he isn't but yeah, thank God he is. "Elena, get Stefan over here. I'm taking Damon to my place."

She holds the syringe out to him. Her arm is so slim, a bone is nothing. It's chalk. I could crush it, there isn't a thing in this room that could stop me but that vervain she's holding. That vervain I just convinced Ric not to use because I am Rebekah's fucking boy scout.

He shakes his head. "No vervain. It's okay."

She is unbearably vulnerable and I am losing my grip. "Tie me up," I growl because even after all of the bilge and crud she heard me spew she is fine, she is just fine and I _have to hurt her_. Snap her neck. Crush her skull, smash her pelvis.

Elena is shaking her head. "Don't Ric, I trust him, he didn't mean to -"

Twist off her head. Rip out her heart. "Tie me up, Ric. Now." The hook is directing traffic, all violent ideas to the front, pussy-ass whiny bitches in the back.

Ric strains at the clusterfuck of instructions. He whips back to me. "But you said -"

I bellow at him. "TIE ME UP!"

Elena freezes. "I'm going to tie him up," Ric says and drags me into the hall. I love this house, linen-slash-weapons closet, towels are on the top shelf, crossbows on the bottom. Rope right behind the cute, wrist-mounted stake shooter.

I am sweating and shaking as I hold my wrists together behind my back because the hook hates defeat but who are we kidding, this is not defeat. It's postponement. Two, three loops and a tight knot around my forearms, four times around and the rope squeezes around my shoulders. It is no match for a psychotic, possessed vampire, but it bolsters the losing team. I let Ric wrangle me down the stairs and I hear Elena behind us. "Stay," I bark at her.

* * *

I perch on the front edge of the passenger seat, my arms and the rope take up too much room, and I listen to Elena ruin everything.

"Can you handle this?"

"Nope."

"I mean, can you keep yourself from… switching?"

"I know what you meant."

"Because he's not himself, Ric."

"Yeah, I know."

"He didn't mean to hurt me, but… please be careful. He's messed up. I couldn't stand it if I lost you, too."

The hook perks _way_ up. Shit. _Shit_.

* * *

I have been paying attention, I have done the math. What hurts Elena the most? Not direct physical assault, she's too tough. No, you have to wound the people she cares about. She will jump off a moving train to save her family and friends, she will sacrifice herself a hundred times over. To get to her, you have to hurt someone she loves.

I will break her, whether I want to or not, I'd be an idiot not to see that now. The hook will make sure I break her. So I'm taking charge of the how. I've chosen my target and it's going to work, there's no way it can't, but at least it will hurt me more.

Because I have never in my life had a friend like Ric.

Two steps inside Ric's loft and I drop the surreptitiously untied ropes in a heap on the floor. He lunges at me but I swipe his legs out from under him and the loud crack tells me I broke something. The groan tells me it was something important.

I drag him up as close to standing as he can manage.

"You broke my knee!"

"Good. Now you won't run." I press him back into a kitchen chair, easy, then circle around behind him. His calf juts out at an odd, tell-tale angle. I rest my hand on his shoulder and it only looks like I still have a choice. But nothing in me belongs to me anymore. I am a weapon. Elena will be heartbroken, which counts as broken in anybody's book, it _has_ to. She will be safe and I will be free. She will hate me forever but join the fucking club. I am the president.

I run my fingers through his hair and grab, I pull his head back and expose his pulsing, hot neck. I could do it fast, let myself miss it, lose myself in the kill. But I don't deserve to miss it. If I'm going to kill him, I want it to give me a scar.

I bite, slowly, and drink. He squirms, harder, curses, tries to fight back. I wish I could vomit.

I drain more than he can spare but he is still alive. He will black out soon, his heart is weakening, needs blood to pump blood. His organs will fail. He won't be able to breathe.

I come back around to face him, to show him my face. He's pale. There's a thin sheen of sweat and heartbreak covering each of us.

His eyes roll and now he's trying to maintain eye contact. "Why?"

I want to tell him, I want to tell him every last thing, unburden myself and lay it all out. He's not going to make it, we are both so hopelessly damaged that the hook has wandered off, it's tossing back a few celebratory shots. The hook doesn't give a fuck about talking to a dead man. "Because I give up, Ric. I can't beat her. Even when I fight it, she wins."

"Rebekah compelled you to kill me?"

The pain is leaking away in anticipation of what this will do to Elena. I am a coward. "You're just a means to an end. You got the short stick because I don't give two shits about Jeremy. And you showed up." I'm killing my best friend because it's convenient. No one has ever been as low as me. "If I said this hurts me more than you, would you buy it?"

"No. Yeah, maybe. What happened to you in there?"

"Torture. Mindfucking."

He coughs and I'd know that cough anywhere, it bubbles and it means he's circling the drain. "So if I'm the means, who's the end?"

I take a breath because I'm not sure I can say it out loud. I brace myself and give it a shot. "Elena." It's more of a grunt than a word.

I hear Stefan's voice in the street, then Elena's, double fuck. They're stomping and stumbling up the stairs toward us. The door bangs open.

"Damon? Alaric, no!" Elena shrieks. She's at his feet, hands ghosting over his obviously broken leg. The hook does a backflip. I hear a crunch.

* * *

When someone breaks your neck, things come back in an unsettling order. First the brain, the ears and eyes, but the spine is still knitting itself together, lots of tangled nerves doing their little square dance so you wake up paralyzed.

I'm flat on something higher than the floor. Ric's bed. They're talking in the next room. It's muffled. No one is crying.

"I should have known." Stefan. Yes, baby bro, you should have. "Klaus compelled him right in front of me. I should have guessed."

"None of this is your fault." Elena. Confident, strong, and not in the least bit broken.

"Did he tell you what the compulsion is?" Figure it out, Stefan.

"Something to do with Elena. I don't know what." Alaric! Alaric, Alaric! Unimaginably bizarre to feel absolute glee but not be able to make your lips into a smile. "But if he was going to kill her, he would have done it."

That's my boy, that is exactly right. Killing her would have been simple but my instructions are to be creative, my instructions are to break her and she is far from broken so I am far from done. I know the rules now and I know how to do this. I am already hatching a new plan because listen to her, she's fine, she's still just fine.

The feeling comes roaring back all at once, like slipping back into my own skin, but the control takes a moment longer. Come on, _come on_. I have to get out of here. The bedroom window is open and I have work to do.


	6. Chapter 6

_(A/N: It takes a village to write a fic sometimes, and this is definitely one of those times. __**CreepingMuse**__ gets all the credit for the idea of Damon's field trip, so if you want to thank someone, thank her._

_Meanwhile, thank **you** for reading, for enjoying this, for telling me what you think. I want to throw a party for all of you. There will be delicious snacks and we will watch TVD and sing Florence + the Machine at the top of our lungs during D/E scenes and share boxes of Kleenex. Please join me. It's the least I can do for your generosity and solidarity.)_

I am hopeless and I am looking for a gun.

I climbed out of Ric's window believing I was on the verge of a breakthrough, some sort of plan that would satisfy Rebekah but leave Elena intact. Some way to save her, to save myself.

But then I realized with the full force of incontrovertible truth that it was impossible.

I can't trust my thoughts. I wanted to beat this and I have fought it but it is stronger than I am, Rebekah is stronger, she wins every time. It wins. She's in here, she's got the wheel and I can't beat her. I think a thought and I'm sure it's mine but then it's not, obviously not, and I am ripping into Alaric's jugular because I think it's a good idea. I am fired from thinking.

And yet I have no choice so I have been pondering Elena and her infinite reserve of forgiveness. Now that she knows that I'm compelled, that I'm a weapon Rebekah is wielding, that I am a fucking _victim_, there is literally nothing I can do that she won't forgive me for, nothing she will hold me accountable for. Nothing I can do to break her. Except kill her. Because dead always equals broken.

But I can't do it up close and personal. I can't watch the spark that I would have given my last breath for just a few days ago ebb and blink away before my eyes. I am a coward, I think we can all agree that I lack anything remotely resembling a spine, and so I will hide in the shadows and shoot her through the head. I will do it in the daytime, soon, before the sun goes down, so I can slip my ring off and step into the light and finally be finished. And that's it, isn't it? Now I know why Isobel ripped her necklace off and burned. It was a desperate grab at absolution, the only one she could make. I want that. I want to be finished.

If I could just find that gun.

I admit there is still a small corner of me that wants to fight but it is damaged beyond repair. It is bashing its tiny, crucified self against the hook and making wild, ridiculous suggestions. It is weeping and I might be weeping too. It seizes on an idea that terrifies me to my bones, it is a miserable idea, it is a Hail Mary and those never work. It is not even worth a shot and yet I find myself listening.

It's this: one quiet request to take it all back, or several loud, begging, moaning requests, and I lay myself prostrate before Rebekah. I promise her anything, I will indenture myself to her forever, if she'll take it back. The humiliation seems appropriate, I deserve no more than this, or maybe it just feels familiar, to return to where my end began. She is omnipotent and I simply have to beg. I have nothing left to lose. The worst she could say is no, but that is not true, the worst she could say is here is your heart, isn't it pretty, or here is Elena's heart, isn't it delicious? I swallow the fear because it is the least of my pain.

When begging doesn't work, because it won't work, and she turns me loose again, at least I know how it all will end.

Found the gun. Knew it was here somewhere.

* * *

I am frozen, I am nailed to this junky welcome mat that says 'Beware of Dog,' fucking hilarious. The screaming terror rushes back full force, it belongs to this place, it soaks in through my pores. I am back, hanging from shredded wrists, laid wide open and I want to die. Now even that little cheerleading fraction of myself is thinking this was a shitty idea.

Rebekah swings open the door and there she is, unassuming, cute as a button, and we both know she is Shiva.

"Come in, love," she grins and walks away. I trail after her. Can you hear me howling? I am howling.

I follow her past The Room but I cannot look, I place one foot in front of the other, one two three four keep going five six and I am past it. She opens the very next door, it's a sitting room, art books and tea on a low table in the center, upholstered side chairs with too many throw pillows, curtains pulled back to reveal bright afternoon sun. It is conspicuously charming and was here the entire time my blood was swirling around on that tarp. I hate this room.

I hover just inside the doorway. It is too late to bolt.

"I have to say," she purrs, sinking into a chair facing me, "I am not impressed. Elena is the picture of happiness. Frankly, I'm disappointed as hell."

The hook is disappointed too, it scrapes a jagged groove along my resolve and my breath rushes out but I don't scream.

"You're smarter than this," Rebekah taunts. "You may be an ass, but you're clever at least. I expected more from you."

The hook is roaring at me, it is eager to get on the road, to give it another go. Send me back in, coach, this time I'll do you proud. I pinch my thigh to shut it up.

She waits, squints. She must be used to broken people by now. This can't be her first rodeo. "Well then, to what do I owe the unexpected pleasure of your visit?"

Here it is. I am on the precipice. I have nothing to lose. I choose the simplest, most obvious parachute and I leap. "I'd like a harder assignment, somewhere else, on a larger scale. This is beneath me."

"Beneath you? But you haven't done anything yet."

Lie. Lie big and lie proud. Incorporate truth. Nothing to lose. "Because it's too easy. It's boring. I can be downright diabolical. All that evil shit Stefan used to do, that you adored? He learned those tricks from me. Give me something that lives up to my potential. This? Not worthy of me, not in the slightest."

She studies me, that infernal pout moist and glinting in the light. "No."

"No?" Fuck.

"Damon, it's not boring. Not for me anyway. I can wait. Eventually, somebody is going to turn up in pieces."

"_Me!_" I am likely to crumble any second. "You want _me_ in pieces. I'm the one that hurt you, the one that humiliated you. _It should be me_." On to the next tactic, I guess.

She sees the cracks. She loves it. I am her clown. "Watch out, dear. Don't get all riled up on my account."

"I'm the one that fucked you twelve ways from Tuesday. I'm the one that made you come, mewling like a dirty kitten. _I'm_ the one that twirled fingers in holes you didn't even realize you had, just so Sage could take a walking tour of your head. Elena's not your enemy, I am."

"Indeed." I'm getting to her, I know it, I feel it. This might work.

"So _hurt me_! Cut out my eyes. Rip out my heart. Compel me to take a never-ending walk on the bottom of the ocean. But leave Elena out of this."

Her face is inscrutable. "Tempting… I do hate you. But hurting Elena does hurt you. That, darling, is the essence of the plan. She means everything to you."

"But I mean nothing to her." Truer words were never spoken.

"All evidence to the contrary." Sarcasm and pity drip from her like sap. "Perhaps if you try harder, love. I believe in you."

This is not working and I am desperate. I wilt. Nothing to lose, nothing to gain, I am nothing. Hail fucking Mary. My voice breaks, it is too soft. "Rebekah, I'm begging you. Take your compulsion back."

Her eyes narrow to slits and a smirk blooms on her lips. My desperation has made her glow. The smirk widens to a smile. "I don't think so."

"Take your compulsion back. I will literally do anything you want me to, but take it back."

She leans back in the chair. "Poor Damon."

I am gutted. My knees buckle, they slam against the floor and I am kneeling before her, offering up nothing less than my entire self. "Please." Check me out, using the magic word. Nothing to lose. No way to win, no reason to stop.

Rebekah smoothes her dress against her legs as she stands. She slinks over to me. I sway, I shake. I am fighting to stay in one place. I am at her mercy, where is her knife? She kneels beside me, sickeningly intimate again, she traces a line up my arm with her finger, winds an arm around my waist from behind. "I already told you what I want from you."

"Anything else. _Anything_."

She fingers the buttons on my shirt, the fly of my jeans. She can feel me trembling, I know it, feel the muscles in my torso thrum against her body. "What makes you think I'd want what you could give me?"

"I can be useful." I force myself to turn my head, to meet her eye. I have to be persuasive. This is Elena's last chance. "You need minions if you're going to hold your own against your brothers. I'd be an excellent minion."

She tugs on my earlobe with her teeth, licks along the edge. "You're too willful to be a minion, darling."

"Then compel me. I'll kill everyone you want me to kill and fuck you blind every night. Or bring other people around for you to kill and fuck. Whatever you want. Plus, I'm a fantastic cook. Come on, it'll be fun."

She leans her head on my shoulder. She is thinking about it. My heart leaps.

"No, thank you," she whispers against my ear. She gently slaps my chest as punctuation and slips her arms from around me. Her weight shifts, she's standing up. No. This conversation is ending, it can't be, I'm not done, I'm not ready. I tally, I whir, I wrack my brain, rifling through old kills to remember some desperate attempt I could use, any other tactic left to get out of this. Be creative. Ha.

I hear a footstep in the doorway behind me and I know that step. My heart sinks, it smashes in shards because now none of it matters anymore. All hope is lost, it is over, it is done.

"Rebekah."

It's Elena. She's here.


	7. Chapter 7

_(A/N: It took me a long time to write this final chapter. I was so stuck. I was just immovable, and that was partly because I was generally depleted but also because I couldn't see my way past some things I stubbornly insisted had to happen. I was forcing it. But once again __**CreepingMuse**__ made the suggestion that opened the door. It makes perfect sense to me, and it satisfies my desire for circularity, that she provided the prompts for both the beginning and the end of this story. __**Afanoftvd, WildYennifer,**__ and __**Elvishgrrl**__ talked me through challenging points along the way, including this last chapter, and although I didn't end up proceeding with some of the ideas they offered, their suggestions and solidarity have been enormously helpful. Barn-sized thanks to all four of them. _

_I may not post another fic for a while, but I am far from done forever. Look out for future postings, and if you have an idea you think would suit my style, I would be eager to hear it._

_I fear I can't really describe how your support and enthusiasm have helped me. Your comments have been invigorating, enlivening, like the roaring engine behind this story. I couldn't, in fact wouldn't, have done it without you. Thank you, all of you.) _

* * *

I am splitting in two.

Elena is here. I want to see her, warn her, but my back is to the door and Rebekah presses on my shoulder, anchors me to the ground. She is so much stronger, so much older. She is geological, she might as well be stone. She pets me like a poodle. "We're a little busy right now. Would you come back later?"

"I know what you did to him," Elena says. Her voice breaks, she is unprepared. I will eat her, I know it. "And it has to end."

Rebekah teases my ear. "Well, now that you're here, he'll finally finish his assignment." Her fingers feel unfamiliar without the slickness of my blood on them. She tilts my face up to hers. "Right, love?"

I swallow, dart my eyes as best I can toward the door. Still can't see her.

"I can't stop him," Elena says and it is nothing less than the truth. No one can stop me.

Rebekah steps back. "Have at it," she says, and if I move slowly enough the future will never come. But it has to, here it is, and I am turning to face Elena. The hook is roaring like a rabid fan at a prize fight.

She glows, vibrates with defiance. Her eyes lock with mine and the hook yanks so hard, so fast that I blur to her, right there in front of her, no personal space, breathing her breath. "You shouldn't be here," I say and I want that to be it but the hook has so much more to say. "But you couldn't resist, could you? Sweet little Elena: martyr, moron, peril whore."

"I couldn't let you take this all on yourself. You needed help."

"From a blood bag with a hero complex? Unless you're offering up a sip, I don't need anything from you."

"Will it help?"

"Will what help?"

"A sip."

The hook spreads a wide, predatory smile across my face.

"I think I understand now," she insists. "All of this - the mean little digs, pushing me away, trying to kill Alaric, coming here – it was all to prevent yourself from hurting me, or turning me into a vampire, or killing me, wasn't it?" Close enough, and it's a relief to hear that she put it all together, or almost anyway. But it doesn't amount to a damn thing because it won't save her. I will still kill her, I can't not.

Rebekah is steel and velvet. "Break, dear. He was supposed to break you. Creatively. But so far I'm terribly disappointed."

The hook drills into all my nerves at once, I cough against the sheer weight of agony. "It's impossible," I protest. "She's unbreakable."

"Everyone has a weakness," Rebekah purrs.

The hook is impatient, it slams my hips against Elena's. I am a sledgehammer. "Watch," I toss at Rebekah over my shoulder. I am a tangle of anticipation and horror and delight. "You are nothing but blood. Meaningless. Worse, you're stupid. Chasing after vampires like a goddamn groupie. All any vampire wants is your blood."

"Not all of them."

"Your beloved Stefan drained his way up and down the eastern seaboard."

"He's better now. So are you."

I punch the doorframe and let the blood rush in, feel heavy, engorged eye sockets and the hook bathes in blood lust. "You're wrong, Elena," I seethe because about this I am entirely right and if I could tattoo it on the surface of her mind, I would. "I am a ruthless killer. I have killed hundreds, thousands of people, including _your mother_. I killed my own best friend several times just for the fuck of it, including once _today_. And I am going to kill you, too." Snap her neck. Let the blood pour, hot and thick, down your throat.

"Not anymore. Not after everything you've done to protect me. I _know_ you. I trust you."

"Then you're an idiot," Rebekah calls from across the room. I hear a flip. She's reading a fucking magazine.

But the hook is a huge fan of Killer Damon and gets to my mouth before I can stop it. "After I kill you, I'm going back to your house to turn Jeremy inside out. To bleed him like a stuck pig."

Elena shakes her head, sets her jaw. "You're just saying that because you're compelled. I know that you'd protect Jeremy with your life because I love him. You've changed."

She is adorable and woefully misguided. "I _can't_ change. I'll always be a vampire."

"Keep fighting, Damon," she whispers. "I forgive you for everything. I know this isn't you."

"Don't," I grunt. A dream wants to unfold, I try to refuse it but the hook grabs on. A bite, a tear along Elena's collarbone, lapping the blood up, and why not, pressing my cock against her, thrusting, getting off on it while she whimpers and weakens. How's that for broken? I cannot be trusted, nothing can stop me from hurting her and even then she will remain whole and I will still have more work to do. I am Janus, two faces, one that can only mourn how I'm failing her, the other eager to devour our future. "Why are you here?" I moan, because she has never had a worse idea than coming here.

"I finally realized that everything you've done since Stefan rescued you, you've done because you love me. You told me how you felt, but now? Now I really see it, I see how powerful it is. So I'm here to help you fight."

"Good luck," Rebekah laughs.

Elena glances at her, stifling a glare, then turns her face back to me and it is somehow calm. "And listen, you have to know: _I love you too_. Use it for strength, for hope. I love you and I don't care if Rebekah's listening. I need_ you_ to know how I feel, no matter what happens."

Before I can contemplate love or hope or strength, the hook squeals. It adores this turn of events, because if she loves me then the stakes are higher and she is once again breakable. It tries to gain control of my mouth but not this time, dammit. I bite my lip hard, draw blood against anything the fucking hook can say to ruin this moment I have wished for in abject desperation. I can't speak. Inside, the hook and I are fighting to the death, swords and lances and machetes, so the most I can do to show her, to thank her, to reassure her is to close my eyes. My body slumps against her, just barely, but I hear her breath calm and that is it, that is our moment, our first and last.

Now I am flung away, flying across the room, crashing against the far wall. I take out a painting, feel the frame crack against my shoulder. I am a heap on the floor and Rebekah is wrapping her fingers around Elena's throat. "I honestly don't know what the big deal is about you." Squeeze. "You're not so special. You're just meat."

"Let her go," I attempt. Yank.

"You had your turn and you failed. Now it's my turn."

Can I fight Rebekah? Under her compulsion, is it even possible for me to mount a defense? I test the idea out. I visualize pushing her away from Elena. The hook seems to be okay with this, it still wants to complete its task. Elena is gasping, she looks like a fish, she's sliding up the door frame. She has no time.

I launch myself at Rebekah, catch her off guard and the momentum spins her into the marble foyer, away from Elena. Thank goodness for slick floors.

"Come on, love. Just kill her and be done with it," Rebekah calls to me and they are not just words, they are instructions. The hook grows, it swells to fill my entire self. I am nothing but a hook in a skin sleeve.

Elena doesn't even look scared. She looks content, alive, like she has a secret. "Damon," she says because that is all we have time for and it is enough. I lay my hands on her shoulders, let them slide down her arms toward her trembling fingers. I want to hold her hands in mine and look into her eyes and have one more moment, one fucking Nicholas Sparks moment before the end, and that's when I feel it. Metal along her forearm. The dagger.

She is here to fight for me. All I have to do is show up. What little there is left of me.

She nods a nod that says 'now we both know the whole plan, no need to articulate a single point of it.' But that is bullshit, I have no idea what she's planning. She can't possibly have anything resembling a plan. There is no way she can dagger Rebekah. That bitch will never let her guard down.

But that isn't entirely true. And now an idea is brewing, the barest glimpse of a plan and I'm careful not to think it too clearly, I need to satisfy the hook, seduce it.

"Rebekah, get over here," I croon. "If I'm going to kill her, the least you can do is watch."

"Watch?" She sounds skeptical but she's standing up, she's smoothing her skirt, here she comes. Reel her in.

I grab Elena's arm hard, the one without the dagger. I whirl her around so she's leaning her fragile back against my chest and we're facing Rebekah, posed like a prom picture. "If you're a good girl, you can have a taste," I purr, flashing my most lascivious, evil, hungry grin and it is not even remotely a stretch because I am each of those things.

The hook is all fangs and destruction. So is Rebekah, hovering like a vulture inches in front of Elena. So am I, rearing my head back.

I bite.

My fangs sink into her neck. Her blood fills my mouth. And none of the pain, the horror, the fierce, unimaginable agony of resistance these last few days that have felt like years, none of it compares to the sheer bliss of acquiescence. Only the faintest shadow remains of why I had ever resisted. I will drink and kill because she told me to, I will float on this river of perfect joy forever.

Elena shifts in my arms, jabs outward, and I remember the dagger and the plan and why I am filling with Elena's sweet blood.

I look up and Rebekah is glaring at me but the glare is turning stale as her body darkens. She is collapsing forward onto the dagger. Elena pushes and Rebekah topples away, gray and vacant.

The hook is gone. Elena saved me.

And then she crumples at my feet, her hand fluttering at her neck. Blood is everywhere, running down her clothes. The gash is enormous. It was that kind of bite, the kind that doesn't leave room for seconds.

"Damon," she rasps as she tries to stem the bleeding with fingers but there is no way to stem the bleeding, she will be dead in minutes.

I rip at my wrist and cradle the nape of her neck with my other hand. Her eyes are starting to roll back. "I can't lose you," I breathe, I plead, and it is everything I can do not to force her but I have already taken so much from her that I grit my teeth and offer my wrist. We have been here before and if she rejects my blood this time I don't know what I will do, I will have killed her and I cannot live without her. "_Please_, Elena." Elena. Please.

She is still as death and I am sure I have lost everything. But then her eyes close and she opens her mouth for me so I press my wrist against her lips. She has so little strength that I _will_ my blood to pump harder, but of course there is nothing I can do except hope that it's not too late, that I didn't kill her, that she isn't already gone.

Moments the size of canyons pass and then I feel the barest tug. Then more. She is drinking, her eyes are opening. Her wound – my wound – is knitting together. It is gruesome and miraculous.

I exhale and I intend it to be nothing more than a sigh but it takes me by surprise. It is a torrent, an overwhelming cascade of relief and monumental regret and uncountable memories of terror. My breath comes in wild heaves, it rips through my voice. It is over. I never really believed it would be over.

Somewhere outside of myself I hear her, I feel her palm along my jaw, "it's okay… it's okay." I lean against the door frame, let my head fall back. I breathe, I have to refill myself with something, replace the hook, and air will do for now. I can't find my bravado so tears are running down my cheeks. "I love you, Damon. You're going to be okay." There's a hitch in her breath and I know she's crying too, this poor unbreakable girl. I'm gutted. I open my eyes and she's crying, yes, but she's smiling, too. "We did it. Go team."

She licks her bottom lip and for a split second I think it's because she's disgusted to have my blood on it but then I look into her eyes and I know it's not. She leans toward me, her eyelids flutter closed, and she opens her lips over mine.

Kisses mean different things. When I kissed her on the porch, it meant "I am waiting for you." When she kissed me on my deathbed, it meant "I accept you." And now it is conceivable, in fact it seems entirely possible, that there will be time for all different kinds of kisses, meaning all kinds of things, from "good morning" to "take off your shirt" to "more." But for both of us, I know this kiss means "I love you."

I gather her body close and she's pressing herself against me carefully, folding herself onto my lap. I hold her in my arms and I never want to stop kissing her.

She smiles against my mouth. "Let's go home," she says.

_The end._


End file.
